Yoga and Me

By: Ankita Rao

October 2010

I’ve been instructed in yoga in Italian while studying in Florence, and felt the
soft sand under my palms in Brazil, fought off ants in the grass when I balanced
in vrkshasana (tree pose) in Ahmedabad and did head stands in Guatemala. Even
before I moved to Washington, D.C., in January, I had googled the closest three
yoga studios to my workplace and chosen the sunniest room to practice four days
a week during my lunch hour.

My practice is not daily, or intense. I
don’t wake up at 5 a.m. to meditate and I sometimes play hip-hop music when I
stretch out. But after five years of instruction and fourteen years of practice,
I’ve come to regard my pink yoga mat as my most faithful companion. I grew up
watching my dad finishing his sun salutations every morning, no matter how late
he stayed awake the night before or which hotel my family was staying in for
vacation. When I was 12, my mom opened a yoga studio, Yoga Shakti, close to our
home, and I learned asana through a flux of teachers, from a Himalayan yogi to
gentle ex-hippies.

The more yoga we practiced, the more it pervaded in
different parts of our lives—the food we ate, the books we read, and later, my
career path.

In the United States I was exposed to a new culture—the
so-called New Age trend that placed anything and everything under the headline
of spirituality. I would hear the words “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual”
become a mantra as everyone borrowed from Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism. And
while the roots of this practice, whether Kundalini or Ashtanga, were traced
back to Indian yogis and lineages, I hardly ever saw Indians in my yoga classes,
let alone giving instruction.

This insight into the new East-West blend
deepened in college at the University of Florida, where I stepped into a
jam-packed power yoga class taught by a Jewish guy with a mass of red curls.
Without realizing it, I had also stepped into a community—the same fluid group
of people that I would see riding road bikes, shopping at the farmer’s market
and frequenting Indie Night at a local club.

It was still surprising to
me each time fifty people in a gym room bowed their heads and said Namaste, or
inhaled deeply and exhaled Om. But when I lay in final relaxation, savasana,
after an hour and a half of twisting, engaging and lengthening, it made complete
sense why each person in the room had sought out this practice and the energy
that would keep them going through the rest of the day and week.

In the
summer of my freshman year I committed to a month of yoga teacher’s training in
the hills of upstate New York. I traded in my dorm-and-pizza schedule for waking
up at 5 a.m. and filling the day with more than 4 hours of asana, intensive
hours of Bhagavad Gita reading, philosophy lectures, chanting and service work
to help sustain the ashram.

For the first time, I could sing full songs
while in a headstand, and bring my mind to some degree of stillness in the
morning. My shoulders were stronger, my breathing deeper and I felt inspired in
a way that school couldn’t instill. Once again I was the only Indian on the
grounds, except for the cook. This time I was also the youngest person, although
only by a year. Every morning and evening I listened to the chants and prayers
from the temples and pujas of my childhood—the pronunciation twisted and forced
off of unaccustomed tongues.

Part of me cringed when it was time to say
Gajananam (opening prayer), knowing the soft “th” would become a “t” and the
entire tune would change to a Western melody. But by the end of the month, my
ethnocentric judgment was replaced by gratitude, and my ears only heard the
harmony of thirty voices that had grown together through hours of pushing our
minds and bodies to a different kind of edge.

Back at UF, I continued to
teach yoga at our gyms. Suddenly, I was in front of classes of 50 students,
feeling taller and stronger than my 5 feet and 2 inches. When I was teaching,
there was no nervousness or self-consciousness. There was a room full of people
who came seeking stronger arms, a looser hamstring or a reprieve from their desk
lives.

Later, I created my own class at the Indian Cultural Center. The
meditation room became a place for my friends and me to laugh and stretch and
test out unconventional music. My style was no style. I would change my
sequences in the middle, wear old sweatpants and tailor the poses to how much
energy the class had that day. What started out as three consistent students
soon grew to fill the room past capacity, and I had found the kind of yoga that
I wanted to teach: free, fun and full of laughter.

When I moved to Italy
for a semester-long study abroad program, my dad sent me on the airplane with
the following advice: “When in doubt, breathe.”

I remember holding on to
those words as I sat on the flight without knowing anybody in the country I
would be living in for six months. The words have served me since—in the back
seat of a jeep that seemed to fly off the road in India, or when I was walking
home alone at night and dark figures seemed to be everywhere.

When my
friends ask me, “How are you not freaking out right now?” during exams or
adventures gone wrong, I have nothing to credit but the practice that has helped
me return to the most natural action I can do. As I start my new life beyond the
house where I grew up and beyond college in Florida, I run into uncertainties
every second. I think about my career, friends, boyfriends and finances. I send
out applications and story ideas and wonder where I will be in a year, or even
six months.

Then I roll out my pink yoga mat and tuck my legs underneath
me. I extend my legs and lower my heels to the ground. I breathe so I can hear
and feel it expand at my core. And for a second I have nothing to think about,
and nothing to know. Just my most faithful companion and me.

[Ankita Rao
is a recent journalism graduate working in Washington, D.C.]

Source:
India Currents

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